Rethinking the ATV
Over supper on Friday,
Mark apologized for being a bit surly when the time came to load up the
ATV and send it home. The
trouble wasn't what I thought (that he'd had a long day and didn't
appreciate working after hours). Instead, he told me he'd fallen
a bit in love and wasn't ready to see her go.
I should have known
something was going on earlier in the week when I caught Mark patting
the hunk of metal fondly as he filled up the tank. "Good girl,"
he said under his breath. Then, catching my eye, he tried to turn
the praise over to Lucy.
I've been adamantly
anti-ATV in the past, mostly because of the damage I've seen when
recreational riders tear up the woods. But after days of hauling
this week when the floodplain was pretty soggy, I have to say that Mark
is starting to change my mind. I'm willing to admit that I was
wrong when I said the golf cart is lighter on the ground than a
four-wheeler. Under Mark's steady hand, the ATV acts like a
tractor, creeping across wet terrain and only leaving tread marks
rather than ruts.
Does this mean Mark's
going to get an ATV to dote on in the near future? The jury's
still out. I suspect the decision will depend on a lot of factors
like whether the golf cart
batteries are salvageable and whether her dunking and extended sit in
the floodplain ruined other parts of the electrical apparatus.
But the option has finally made its way to the negotiating table, right
along with pigs.
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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Darn it! You're all on Mark's side....
Nevertheless, I appreciate the comments (and especially Seth's by-line.
)
Located in The East, where most electric power is generated from coal, the ecological impact of running an electric cart may actually be greater than that fom running the ATV with ICE.
Consider one or two mini-horses, easily trained to drive, to do your hauling. (It takes about 10 minutes to teach them to be led while hauling.) They are cheap to feed (free if you have your own small pasture; about 5 bucks a week each if you have to buy hay)and return a good deal of the feed as fertilizing manure. They're never hard to start even on the coldest morning. And the enjoyment factor is priceless.
My vote is a yes yes yes. Mom
An ATV will probably be lighter than a golf cart, and the tires are bigger too. So it will generate less contact pressure on the ground. It also probably has more ground clearance and being an off-road vehicle is designed to ford streams.
If you charge the golf cart from the grid, the milage of both (converted to the original fossil fuel) is probably in the same order of magnitude.
For both golf carts and ATVs, newer models will probably get better milage than older ones.
For an ATV, fuel injection (EFI) will be more fuel efficient than a carburetor. Liquid cooling is better than air cooled for a relatively slow moving vehicle.
I'm not sure as to wether a half-automatic (centrifucal clutch with foot operated gearbox) would give better milage than a fully automatic (CVT-type) transmission. A CVT has more internal losses but it tends to keep the engine running in its power band. And it is probably easier to drive.